Nineteen Minutes- Outside Reading Post 5

The positive and negative effects of rebellion.

In the novel Nineteen Minutes, one of the main character Peter Houghton rebels. Peter spends all of his life being relentlessly and brutally bullied. Finally, after years of being tormented and alone, Peter snaps. He goes to school with a gun, and ends many lives. Obviously there were many negative consequences, but I also believe there were a few positive ones as well.
After Peter is locked up for murder, he obviously has to deal with the hard consequences, which he deserves. First of all Peter has to deal with the regret and pain of ending young lives and hurting families in his town. He also has to spend a lot of time in jail, "He'd be brought back to the jail only until the sentencing hearing; then he would be transferred to the state prison in Concord. Serving out eight consecutive murder sentences, he would not leave it alive" (447). Peter also has to live with knowing the fact that he mentally destroyed the one girl he ever loved- Josie. Because of what Peter did, Josie also ended up going to jail because she tried to protect him during the school shooting by killing her boyfriend Matt. Josie always stood up for Peter their whole lives, and it still ended up hurting her in the end.
However, as unbelievable as it sounds, I think Peter made a small difference. In Peter's school, he received no help from the adult authority there. When Peter was de-pantsed in front of his entire cafeteria, or pushed around, or blatantly humiliated in class, there was no teacher there at his aid. In gym class when Peter was violently beat up, his teacher simply shrugged with a "boys will be boys" attitude. After the school shooting incident, I think it made a lot of people wonder, "how could this have happened?" Peter became the voice for a lot of kids across the nation who were bullied like he was. He also received a lot of letters saying things like, "'I would've liked to be your friend'" (416). So in the long run, I think that the actions of Peter's rebelling may have had a positive impact on society, because it got people thinking. It got people wanting to stop the monster that started this, so incidents like Peter's could be prevented.